There has been a use of a voice mail system which outputs the content of an electronic mail in a voice.
As an example of such voice mail system, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent PUPA 5-260082(reference 1) discloses a first text reading device for providing a voice output of a text by using phonemes of vowel sounds corresponding to an identifier (ID) of the sending side and a second text reading device in which the sending terminal sent an electronic mail with a parameter included therein and the receiving terminal provided a voice output of a text by using the received parameter.
However, the first text reading device disclosed in the reference 1 had to register phonemes in correlation to the ID of the sending side in each of the terminals so that it was cumbersome to set the phonemes and it was hard to change the setting once the phonemes has been set in the terminal.
It addition, the first text reading device selected phonemes of only the vowel sounds for voice output of the text so that it was not capable of providing a voice output of a text in a voice feature including a consonant inherent to each of users who sent an electronic mail.
In addition, because the first text reading device can correlate only one sender ID to only one set of phonemes, it is necessary to register in each terminal a plurality of phonemes of the same content with only the sender ID altered when the user who sent an electronic mail having a plurality of IDs attempts to voice output in a same voice feature using whatever ID so that resource in the terminal devise is wasted and the number of phonemes which can be registered is reduced.
Further, the second text reading device disclosed in the reference 1 sends an electronic mail with phonemes of vowel sounds and a pitch of the voice of the sending user included therein so that the data quantity of the electronic mail tends to increase and invites a congestion in the communication network.
Further, once the voice feature data has been spread over the terminals within the network, it is difficult to limit the use of the voice feature data and the voice feature data may be used by an unauthorized third party leading to a disadvantage of the author of the voice feature data.
Further, there may be a need to limit the usable range of the voice feature data to prevent unsuitable occasion from taking place such as voice outputting the mail to a customer in a casual rhythm, for example, when there is a possibility that a voice feature data in a casual rhythm is stored in the customer's terminal device.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a voice mail system, a voice synthesizing device and a method therefor in which the voice feature in the voice output of an electronic mail is easily set up while a text can be outputted in a voice in a voice feature inherent to each of users who sent the electronic mail.
It is another object of this invention to provide a voice mail system, a voice synthesizing device and a method therefor which is capable of outputting a text in a voice of a voice feature inherent to each of users who sent the electronic mail without adding to each of electronic mails data (voice feature data) indicating the voice feature of the voice when outputted.
It is another object of this invention to provide a voice mail system, a voice synthesizing device and a method therefor in which each voice feature data may be shared with any number of sending IDs while preventing waste of resources of terminals caused by registering a plurality of same voice feature data even when the same user has a plurality of IDs and allowing many voice feature data to be registered in each of terminals.
It is another object of this invention to provide a voice mail system, a voice synthesizing device and a method therefor which can limit the use of voice feature data to a given time period even after the voice feature data have been spread over the network for preventing disadvantages to the author caused by an unauthorized use by a third party.
It is another object of this invention to provide a voice mail system, a voice synthesizing device and a method therefor which can limit the usable range of the voice feature data to prevent unsuitable use of the voice feature data.